and some of my other hobbies too

We’re Home!

The cruise was fabulous. We spent 7 days aboard the beautiful Princess Diamond, pampered by the crew, offered scrumptious food at every turn, with great on board entertainment to chose from and the opportunity to take colored pencil workshops with talented teachers. All that while being transported aboard a floating 5-star hotel to a different Mexican port every other day. This is the way to vacation!

We boarded the ship about 3:00 pm after a mad dash across the Vincent Thomas bridge. At the last minute we got a bit confused about which port the ship was leaving from and had to make some panicked calls from the car to the Princess Cruises’ emergency number for help. The problem was that we had gone to the Long Beach port, when we were supposed to be at the San Pedro port. Fortunately we were not too far from the right place.

After we were finally on board we were able to relax a bit. We watched from our cabin balcony as the the ship maneuvered out of the harbor.

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Before we knew it, it was time to head to the first meet and greet with the Colored Pencil workshop organizers and other participants at one of the ship lounges, the gorgeous Wheelhouse lounge. Most of the other participants were already there. The woman standing in the center of the picture is Ann Kullberg, colored pencil artist and organizer of the Colored Pencil on the High Seas workshops.

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She was immediately recognizable to me having seen her picture in her books and on her online magazine. She is just as zany and bubbly in person as I thought she would be. We had a turn round the room with everybody saying their name and where they were from, which of course went in my one ear and out the other. There were about 50 people there, all the workshop participants plus lots of their spouses.

Pretty soon after that we all headed out to our first dinner at sea. Marty and I were assigned to the first seating at the International Dining Room where we were treated to the first of many incredible five course meals. The dining room was beautiful to behold.

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Over the next week we enjoyed the ship….

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and the food…

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and the workshops

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and the sightseeing.

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I certainly am up for doing this kind of thing again. Hmmm… I wonder if there are any sewing cruises out there?